DECONSTRUCTING LINGLE: IMPLICATIONS FOR TAKINGS
DOCTRINE
by Dale A. Whitman*
In Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc.,1 Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor wrote one of her last and potentially
most important opinions in the field of land use
regulation.2
Speaking for a unanimous court, she put
to rest the notion, originating in Agins v. City of
Tiburon,3 that a due process violation — a regulation
that “does not substantially advance legitimate state
interests” — could be regarded as a Fifth Amendment
taking.
In rallying the Court to this position, O’Connor
performed an important service, although one that will
probably be condemned by property rights advocates.4
She seems to have put an end to a long series of cases
in which the Court confused and conflated due process
clause violations and takings.
She eliminated any
possibility of future reliance by landowners on the
“due process taking” notion of Agins, thus removing a
significant litigation risk for local and state
1
governments.
She accomplished this with considerable
intellectual vigor, clarity, and force.
However, it is not clear whether Justice O’Connor
or her judicial colleagues recognized the full import
of their work.
In this essay I propose to discuss at
least two implications of the Lingle reasoning that
the opinion itself does not mention.
The first is
that if Lingle is taken seriously, it appears to
destroy the “character of the governmental action”
prong of the Penn Central takings test.
That is a
result that may make takings easier for landowners to
establish.
The second implication arises from Justice
O’Connor’s denigration in Lingle of “legitimate public
purpose” as a factor in takings cases.
If her
rhetoric on this matter is taken at face value, it
might be thought to lead to the conclusion that the
government’s purposes and objectives in enacting a
regulation are always irrelevant to a takings
analysis.
I propose to show that this is far from
true, and that governmental purposes and objectives
2
remain highly relevant in assessing whether a taking
is justified by the “background principles” concept of
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council.5
Indeed, the
true residual meaning of “character of the government
action” is the government’s use of a regulation to
enforce Lucas “background principles.”
Of course, the
existence of “background principles” makes takings
more difficult for landowners to establish.
I. The State of Regulatory Takings Law
Strangely, for a case with such important
implications for land use, Lingle did not involve a
land use regulation at all.
Rather, Chevron brought a
challenge to a Hawaii statute limiting rent that oil
companies could charge dealers leasing company-owned
service stations, thus helping independent lesseedealers remain in business.
While the ostensible
objective of the legislation was to restrain the high
fuel prices that Hawaii residents were paying, Chevron
argued that it would be entirely ineffective in doing
so.6 Hence, by Chevron’s view, the statute did not
“substantially advance legitimate state interests” and
3
consequently was a taking under Agins.
The lower
federal courts agreed, but the Supreme Court reversed,
holding that the “substantially advances” test was
inappropriate for determining the existence of a
taking7 and that there was no taking on the facts of
Lingle under any other relevant test.8
Justice O’Connor’s opinion in Lingle provides a
convenient, concise summary of current takings law.
She identifies four theories, each based in an earlier
Supreme Court decision, on which a finding of a taking
can be based.
First, “where government requires an
owner to suffer a permanent physical invasion of her
property” — however minor — it must provide just
compensation.9
A second categorical rule applies to
regulations that completely deprive an owner of “all
economically beneficial use” of her property.10
The
Court held in Lucas that the government must pay just
compensation for such “total regulatory takings,”
except to the extent that “background principles of
nuisance and property law” independently restrict the
owner’s intended use of the property.11
4
Outside these
two relatively narrow categories, regulatory takings
challenges are governed by the standards set forth in
Penn Central.
The Court in Penn Central acknowledged
that it had hitherto been “unable to develop any ‘set
formula’” for evaluating regulatory takings claims,
but identified “several factors that have particular
significance.”12
Primary among those factors are “the
economic impact of the regulation on the claimant and,
particularly, the extent to which the regulation has
interfered with distinct investment-backed
expectations.”13
In addition, the “character of the
governmental action” — for instance whether it amounts
to a physical invasion or instead merely affects
property interests through “some public program
adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to
promote the common good” — may be relevant in
discerning whether a taking has occurred.14
The Penn
Central factors — though each has given rise to vexing
subsidiary questions — have served as the principal
guidelines for resolving regulatory takings claims
5
that do not fall within the physical takings or Lucas
rules.15
A fourth category of taking theory, not mentioned
in the quotation above, is applicable only in the
context of an “exaction” — a demand for land or money
made by government in return for a permit, rezoning,
or other land use approval sought by a landowner.
Justice O’Connor referred to the Nollan16 and Dolan17
cases, which explicate when a taking will be held to
occur under these circumstances, but they are not
germane to my present analysis, and I therefore set
them aside.
How well has the Court done its job in this area?
If one rates the three non-exaction theories in terms
of clarity and predictability, the record is decidedly
mixed.
The “permanent physical invasion” test of
Loretto would get, without doubt, the highest grade —
say, an A-.
Physical occupations by, or at the behest
of, the government are usually easy to identify.
Moreover, the magnitude of the invasion is relevant
only in calculating the landowner’s damages, and not
6
in determining whether a taking has occurred. The test
can therefore usually be applied in a straightforward
manner.
The Lucas test, which established that a taking
occurs when no economic value remains in the property,
is not quite as easy to apply, mainly because of the
exception for “background principles” such as nuisance
law, which allows regulation without payment of
compensation of activities that would have been
regarded as nuisances or the like at common law.
The
scope of the “background principles” concept is not
particularly clear and continues to be debated; it is
discussed in detail below.18
Hence, I would suggest
that, in terms of clarity and predictability, Lucas
rates perhaps a B- or a C+ grade.
The third test, Penn Central, is by comparison a
disaster in terms of clarity and predictability.19
None of the test’s three “prongs” can be calculated by
landowners or government officials with any certainty.
First, the “economic impact” of the regulation on the
landowner is said to be relevant, but no one knows,
7
and no one can learn from reading the Court’s
opinions, how great an impact is necessary to
constitute a taking.
The answer is presumably less
than a 100% reduction of value, or else Penn Central
and Lucas would be redundant of one another, as the
Court plainly believes they are not.
But beyond that,
the required impact is simply uncertain.20
The second prong of the Penn Central test is
almost equally opaque.
What are “distinct
investment-backed expectations” and how can a
regulation interfere with them?
The only significant
guidance we have from the Court is Palazzolo v. Rhode
Island,21 in which the Court recognized that a Penn
Central taking might have occurred despite the fact
that when the landowner acquired title to the
property, the regulation in question was already in
place, although it was not when his predecessor, a
corporation that he controlled, bought the land.
While the majority held that a landowner would not be
absolutely barred from a takings claim by virtue of
having notice of the regulation when she or he
8
acquired the land, the role of notice remains
unclear.22
The third prong of Penn Central is consideration
of the “character of the governmental action,” which I
treat in detail below.
Of the three prongs, it is the
least clear, as the discussion below will show.23
Somehow, the courts are expected to blend or balance
these three prongs in deciding whether a Penn Central
taking has occurred.24
The Court has provided no
guidance as to how this is to be done.
The term
“balance” is itself inapt, for there is no common
scale on which the three factors can be measured.
If
one conceives of the American judicial system as one
in which appellate courts give useful guidance to
trial courts about the meaning and application of the
law, Penn Central represents an appalling case of
judicial malpractice.
Justice O’Connor’s description
of Penn Central as “vexing” hardly begins to express
its unsatisfactory nature; it is well nigh useless.
Its grade would be a D- at best, or perhaps simply an
F.
9
II. The Impact of Lingle on Penn Central
My purpose here is to show how Lingle affects the
third prong of the Penn Central analysis, “the
character of the governmental action.”
I will refer
to this, in the interest of simplicity, as the
“character” element of the Penn Central test.
Since
the Supreme Court has never explained exactly what the
“character” phrase means, lower courts and
commentators have been forced to grapple with its
definition.
The most obvious meaning can be drawn from the
context of the phrase’s use in Penn Central.
In the
next sentence in the opinion, the Court noted that “a
‘taking’ may more readily be found when the
interference with property can be characterized as a
physical invasion by government . . . when
interference arises from some public program adjusting
the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote
the common good.”25
Of course, by virtue of the
Court’s later decision in Loretto, this has become a
truism; a permanent physical invasion is a per se
10
taking.
Hence, if this is all that the “character”
phrase meant,26 it was fully supplanted by Loretto and
thereafter had no independent meaning at all.
However, it seems more plausible to read the
sentence quoted above about physical invasions and
adjustments to the benefits and burdens of economic
life as simply providing one illustration of what the
“character” test means, rather than as exhausting its
meaning.
Indeed, both courts and commentators have
usually considered the test to have some further
significance, although they have had difficulty
deciding what that significance is exactly.
The first view of the “character” test is that it
is a measure of the importance to the public of the
regulation in question, and that the more important
the regulation, the less likely the government will
have to pay to implement it.
In Keystone Bituminous
Coal Ass’n v. DeBenedictis,27 finding no compensable
taking in a Pennsylvania statute requiring coal miners
to maintain some coal in place in order support the
surface, the Court seemed to have in mind the
11
“character” test when it observed that Pennsylvania
was attempting to “arrest what it perceives to be a
significant threat to the common welfare.”28
Justice Stevens’ dissent in First English
Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles29
made this point even more strongly.
The majority in
First English held that a compensable temporary taking
might have occurred when Los Angeles County prohibited
all building on the church’s land.
Stevens disagreed,
in part because the prohibition was intended to
prevent use of a flood-prone canyon, and thus to
protect public safety.
Stevens wrote:
Thus, in order to protect the health and
safety of the community, government may
condemn unsafe structures, may close
unlawful business operations, may destroy
infected trees, and surely may restrict
access to hazardous areas — for example,
land on which radioactive materials have
been discharged, land in the path of a lava
flow from an erupting volcano, or land in
the path of a potentially life-threatening
flood. When a governmental entity imposes
these types of health and safety
regulations, it may not be “burdened with
the condition that [it] must compensate such
individual owners for pecuniary losses they
may sustain, by reason of their not being
permitted, by a noxious use of their
12
property, to inflict injury upon the
community.”30
Thus, Justice Stevens’ opinion in First English, which
was joined by Justices Blackmun and O’Connor, seems to
give a “pass” to the government, exempting it from
compensation if the public interest served by the
regulation is strong and important enough.
It is
plausible to read Stevens’ view as responding to the
Penn Central “character” test and as treating
protection of important public interests like health
and safety as giving the “character” prong enough
weight to overshadow the “magnitude” and “investmentbacked expectations” prongs, so that compensation
would not be required.
A second alternative view of the “character” test
is as a measure of whether the government is acting in
bad faith — playing “dirty tricks” on the landowner.
For example, in Cooley v. United States,31 the court
considered a takings claim based on the Army Corps of
Engineers’ denial of a wetlands fill permit under the
Clean Water Act.
In discussing the issues on remand,
13
the court concluded that the Corps was “jerking
around” the landowner unjustifiably:
Accordingly, those agencies receive
appropriate deference in acquiring technical
information. However, in the instant case
the agency admits its requests for
additional information were not necessary
for issuing a permit. The trial court
previously discounted the credibility of the
Corps’ argument that the permit denial
letter requested additional information in
an altruistic effort to issue a permit. In
conducting a Penn Central analysis, the
trial court may weigh whether the Corps’
conduct evinces elements of bad faith. A
combination of extraordinary delay and
intimated bad faith, under the third prong
of the Penn Central analysis, influence the
character of the governmental action.32
One might have expected the court to relate this sort
of governmental conduct to the due process clause,33
but the reference to Penn Central quite clearly
indicates that the court was engaging in a takings
analysis.
Similarly, in American Pelagic Fishing Co. v.
United States,34 the Court of Claims concluded that the
“character of the government action” would be weighed
negatively if that action seemed to be aimed unfairly
at one person, and especially if the regulation was
14
also retroactive, thus implicating the “investmentbacked expectations” prong of Penn Central:
[I]n considering the character of a
governmental action alleged to constitute a
taking, at least two other factors are also
relevant: (1) whether the action is
retroactive in effect, and if so, the degree
of retroactivity; and (2) whether the action
is targeted at a particular individual.
Both factors are present here.35
A third approach is simply to build the Agins test
into the “character” prong of Penn Central, so that a
failure of due process, or particularly the “enhanced
due process” test of Agins, makes the “character” of
the government’s action bad, and hence tends to lead
to the conclusion that a taking has occurred.
The
Ninth Circuit seems to have done this in Dodd v. Hood
River County.36
Likewise, the Fourth Circuit thought
that the length of the amortization period for a
nonconforming use, if unreasonably short, might
violate the principle of Agins and therefore trigger
the “character of the governmental action” factor in
Georgia Outdoor Advertising, Inc. v. City of
Waynesville.37 The decision of the Court of Claims in
15
Florida Rock Industries, Inc. v. United States38
furnishes another example, where the court summed up
its “character” analysis by concluding that “[t]here
is no dispute between the parties as to whether
preservation of the wetlands through the Corps’
implementation of the Clean Water Act serves to
advance legitimate state interests.”39
There is no way to be sure which (if any) of
these understandings of the “character” test of Penn
Central is “correct” in any absolute sense, given the
fact that the Supreme Court has essentially left the
“character” test unexplained.
But all three of these
approaches have a common thread: all of them depend on
the government’s reasons or motivations for taking the
regulatory action in question.
Because of that fact, none of these views is
legitimate today if one takes Justice O’Connor’s
position in Lingle seriously.
None of the views focus
on the regulation’s impact on the owner, which is
precisely the only focus that a proper takings
analysis can have, according to Lingle.
16
As O’Connor
asserted in Lingle, each of the legitimate takings
tests “focuses directly upon the severity of the
burden that government imposes upon private property
rights”40 — not on the government’s reasons or
motivations for taking regulatory action.
While an
inquiry into the reasons or motivations of the
government may provide a useful background for
determining whether substantive due process has been
violated, it tells nothing useful about whether a
taking has occurred.
As O’Connor observed: “[I]f a
government action is found to be impermissible — for
instance because it fails to meet the “public use”
requirement or is so arbitrary as to violate due
process — that is the end of the inquiry.
No amount
of compensation can authorize such action.”41
Indeed, Justice O’Connor herself seems to have
recognized that her Lingle opinion would destroy the
third prong of Penn Central when she wrote:
“[T]he
Penn Central inquiry turns in large part, albeit not
exclusively, upon the magnitude of a regulation’s
economic impact and the degree to which it interferes
17
with legitimate property interests.”42 The quoted
language omits any reference to the third prong of
Penn Central, the “character” test, and it inserts the
“weasily” italicized language precisely because, I
suspect, O’Connor realized that the unmentioned
“character” prong was inconsistent with the Lingle
opinion and could not survive it.
What is left of Penn Central?
It is now, as
perhaps it should always have been, purely an inquiry
into the extent of the government’s intrusion into
private ownership and private value.
There is no
“balancing” left to do, and there are no contravening
factors that must be weighed against the intrusiveness
of the regulation.
Penn Central is still ambiguous,
but it is simpler and less ambiguous than before.
No
longer will an extremely worthy, or an extremely
unworthy, governmental objective be relevant in
deciding whether a taking has occurred.
An unworthy
objective will still be relevant in deciding whether
the regulation violates due process, and hence must be
blocked by the court, but that is all.
18
This is, I think, a salutary development. Property
rights advocates, obviously disappointed that they
have been deprived of the Agins “substantive due
process taking” theory, will probably applaud the
disappearance of the “character of the governmental
action” prong of Penn Central on the ground that it
will make takings easier to establish.
certain that this is correct.
I am not
Perhaps the courts will
compensate by ratcheting up the “economic impact”
prong of Penn Central, although no one is sure where
that line lies today.43
But the “economic impact”
prong is at least a coherent, understandable measure,
and that is for the better.
III. Protecting Health and Safety as a “Background
Principle”
Justice O’Connor’s rhetoric in Lingle, however,
proves far too much.
She seems to assert that the
government’s objectives and purposes in regulating
land have now become irrelevant to a takings analysis:
The “substantially advances” formula
suggests a means-ends test: It asks, in
essence, whether a regulation of private
property is effective in achieving some
19
legitimate public purpose . . . . But such
a test is not a valid method of discerning
whether private property has been “taken”
for purposes of the Fifth Amendment.44
But in reality, governmental objectives and purposes
remain highly relevant to takings analysis.
The
inescapable reason is that the “background principles
of nuisance and property law” referred to by Justice
Scalia in his opinion in Lucas45 continue to provide a
defense to a takings claim, and those principles are
often directly connected to governmental objectives
and purposes.
Under the “background principles”
concept, since no one has the right, under property
law, to engage in a nuisance, no one has a right to
compensation when the government regulates or
prohibits the nuisance, even if the result of doing so
is to deprive the land of all of its economic value.46
It seems clear that, conceptually, the “background
principles” defense
applies no matter what theory of
takings is at issue, Loretto, Lucas, or Penn Central,
for no taking of any sort can occur when a landowner
is prohibited by regulation from using land in a
manner in which she or he could not have legally used
20
it in any event.
The “background principles”
exception applies to all types of takings.47
Nor is nuisance the only example of a “background
principle.”
As the Lucas majority opinion explains:
[T]he owner of a lake-bed, for example,
would not be entitled to compensation when
he is denied the requisite permit to engage
in a landfilling operation that would have
the effect of flooding others’ land. Nor
the corporate owner of a nuclear generating
plant, when it is directed to remove all
improvements from its land upon discovery
that the plant sits astride an earthquake
fault. Such regulatory action may well have
the effect of eliminating the land’s only
economically productive use, but it does not
proscribe a productive use that was
previously permissible under relevant
property and nuisance principles.48
These illustrations of “background principles of
nuisance and property law” provided by Justice Scalia
in Lucas are quite telling.
First, they establish the
fairly obvious principle that literal application of
nuisance law is not the only “background principle.”
Landfilling that results in flooding of a neighbor’s
land would probably be a trespass rather than a
nuisance,49 but either way, it would be illegal and
enjoinable, and hence not included in the landowner’s
21
property rights.
One can think of other “background
principles” as well, such as the public’s right to use
beaches under the doctrine of “custom” recognized by
the Oregon Supreme Court in State ex rel Thornton v.
Hay,50 or the hunting and fishing rights of native
Hawaiians on vacant land recognized by the Hawaii
Supreme Court in the PASH case.51 Michael C. Blumm and
Lucus Ritchie52 have catalogued several other
categories of “background principles” identified by
state and lower federal courts, including preexisting
water rights,53 the federal servitude on navigable
waterways,54 the “natural use” doctrine,55 the duty to
maintain lateral support of a public highway,56 the
public trust doctrine,57 and the “wildlife trust”
doctrine.58
A regulation enforcing such principles
could not be a taking under Justice Scalia’s analysis
because the regulation would only be restating
historical limitations on the landowner’s rights.
But these background principles can easily be
stated as representing government programs designed to
enhance the public good, and thus to accomplish
22
“legitimate public purposes.”
For example, the
doctrine of “custom” recognized by the Oregon Supreme
Court in Thornton v. Hay is simply the recognition of
the public benefits of providing the state’s citizens
with broad access to the state’s beaches.59
The right
of native Hawaiians to make customary uses of vacant
land is the recognition of the traditional values of
those individuals and the desirability of respecting
and protecting those values.
Indeed, the law of
nuisance can be described either as designed to
prevent one landowner from harming the rights of
others, or as securing the public benefits of quiet,
of freedom from offensive odors, and the like.
One
could go on, but the point is obvious: the existence
of a legitimate public purpose is inherent in the
“background principles” concept.
Hence, public
purpose is anything but irrelevant to a takings
analysis.
The intriguing question, however, is how far the
notion of “background principles” can be extended.
push the concept a bit, let us consider another type
23
To
of regulation: a parcel of land has become dangerous
(or has come to be recognized as dangerous) for human
use.
Lutherglen, the land owned by the Lutheran
Church in First English, provides an apt illustration.
Los Angeles County’s only objection to rebuilding on
Lutherglen was that it was located in a canyon subject
to flash flooding.
The county had designated the
canyon as within a flood protection area, and had
prohibited construction of all buildings and
structures.
In essence, the land had been severely
restricted by regulation in order to forestall the
risks to personal safety that would be raised through
its use.60
Now assume that the regulatory restriction on
Lutherglen is sufficiently severe and permanent to
constitute a Lucas or Penn Central taking.61
Can the
“background principles” concept be employed as a
defense to a takings claim?
would be applicable?
What background principle
The law of nuisance pretty
clearly does not apply, for if the Lutheran Church
rebuilt the structure on Lutherglen, doing so would
24
have no adverse effect on nearby land.
The concept of
nuisance, of necessity, assumes that use of the land
generates negative externalities affecting other
land.62
One possible alternative “background principle”
argument in the Lutherglen case harks back to Mugler
v. Kansas,63 in which a brewery owner asserted that a
state liquor prohibition law constituted a taking of
his property rights without compensation because it
denied him use of his property.
In sweeping language,
the 1887 Supreme Court denied the claim, holding the
regulation a valid exercise of the police power:
It cannot be supposed that the States
intended, by adopting . . . [the Fourteenth]
Amendment, to impose restraints upon the
exercise of their powers for the protection
of the safety, health, or morals of the
community . . . . [A]ll property in this
country is held under the implied obligation
that the owner’s use of it shall not be
injurious to the community.
. . .
A prohibition simply upon the use of
property for purposes that are declared by
valid legislation, to be injurious to the
health, morals, or safety of the community,
cannot, in any just sense, be deemed a
25
taking or an appropriation of property for
the public benefit. Such legislation does
not disturb the owner in the control or use
of his property for lawful purposes, nor
restrict his right to dispose of it, but is
only a declaration by the State that its use
by any one, for certain forbidden purposes,
is prejudicial to the public interests.64
One can almost hear, in the quotation above, echoes of
Justice Scalia’s “background principles” language in
Lucas.
Taken literally, Mugler would seem to teach
that if each landowner has a preexisting obligation
not to use his or her property in a manner “injurious
to the community,” than a regulation that prevents
such use cannot be a taking, no matter how severe its
economic impact.
Indeed, this is virtually the
position taken by the California Court of Appeal on
remand in First English.65
After quoting from Mugler,
the court noted: “We recognize a brewery is a far cry
from a Bible camp.
But here the threat to public
health and safety emanates not from what is produced
on the property but from the presence of any
substantial structures on that property.”66
Hence,
according to the court’s logic, prohibiting the
rebuilding of the structures could not be a taking.
26
Justice Stevens’ dissent from the Supreme Court’s
majority opinion in First English67 expresses the same
view: if the regulation protects health or safety (or
perhaps other important public values), every property
owner is legally bound to comply with it, and hence it
cannot constitute a taking.
Can this view be taken seriously?
Surely not.
Its reference to Mugler reaches back 120 years, to a
time when the distinctions between the takings and due
process clauses had not been worked out.
Such a view
would turn Lingle on its head, teaching not only that
a due process violation cannot per se be the basis for
finding a taking, but also that a regulation
satisfying the due process clause cannot possibly be a
taking.
This is manifestly unacceptable to the modern
Supreme Court.
It would disregard Lucas itself, in
which there was a legislative finding of, and
presumably the actual presence of, abundant benefits
to the public welfare — some relating to health or
safety — from prohibiting the building of houses on
the South Carolina beach.68
It would completely
27
undercut Justice O’Connor’s argument that the
government’s purposes and objectives should be
irrelevant to the finding of a taking.
In essence, it
would completely gut the concept of regulatory
takings.
Ultimately, then, Mugler, and such progeny
as the California Court of Appeal’s opinion in First
English, must be understood to hold that a finding
that the government has acted to advance a valid
police power objective will insulate the government
against a due process attack, but not necessarily
against attack based on the takings clause.
IV. A More Limited “Background Principle”: The
Doctrine of Necessity
It is nonetheless almost certain that some
narrower version of the “health and safety regulation
as a background principle” argument can succeed.
While I lack the temerity to guess what possible forms
it might take, I will offer one illustration, provided
by Justice Scalia himself in a footnote in his Lucas
opinion.69
spreading.
A city has caught fire, and the fire is
The city’s officers conclude that the best
(or only) way to stop the fire’s spread is to destroy
28
a building or a row of buildings, thus creating a
firebreak.70
This example differs from the example of
First English discussed above because there is nothing
dangerous or unsafe — at least at the time of
demolition — about the building itself, and even if
there were, the danger could be eliminated simply by
prohibiting occupancy until the fire risk had passed.
The building is demolished to protect other
properties; it is simply in the wrong place at the
wrong time.
Moreover, the building cannot credibly be
called a nuisance,71 nor does it fit any of the other
categories of “background principles” thus far
identified by the courts.72
It seems quite arguable
that this sort of public action can qualify facially
as a Loretto taking — a permanent physical occupation.
The government’s demolition team physically enters on
the real estate and the consequences, at least, are
permanent: the building is removed.73
Nonetheless,
there is ample authority for the proposition that no
compensation need be paid.
In Bowditch v. Boston,74
the 1879 Supreme Court rejected a landowner’s claim to
29
compensation on these facts and asserted that such was
the historic rule: “At the common law every one had
the right to destroy real and personal property, in
cases of actual necessity, to prevent the spreading of
a fire, and there was no responsibility on the part of
such destroyer, and no remedy for the owner.”75
This
principle, sometimes denominated “necessity”,
continues to be applied,76 and it was recognized by
Justice Scalia in his opinion in Lucas as a proper
illustration of a “background principle” that would
eliminate the necessity of the government’s paying
compensation.77
There is, however, some disingenuousness at work
here.
“Necessity” is always a matter of degree, and
the degree required might be a matter on which
opinions differ.78
There may be a difference between
the importance to the public of stopping the fire in
Bowditch and stopping erosion of the beach in Lucas,
but it is not a conceptually fundamental difference.
The flood-protection ordinance in First English would
seem to be somewhere in between, but presumably on the
30
compensable side of the line.79
The present (and
likely future) state of the law of regulatory takings
leaves the courts to search for that elusive and illdefined boundary between regulations that address
“necessity” and hence leave the government free of the
duty to compensate, and those that address issues of
public importance somewhere short of “necessity” and
thus require compensation if they go too far.
Perhaps this is not so bad.
It is, after all,
the sort of thing judges are paid to decide.
Greater
predictability would be desirable, but at least it is
easy enough to discern the nature of the scale on
which these cases are arrayed, even if we cannot be
sure exactly where the line between “necessity” and
ordinary police power regulations is to be placed.
V. Conclusion
What has Lingle accomplished for the future of
takings law, aside from its obvious effect of
eliminating the “due process taking” theory?
First, I
have suggested that it has eliminated from any further
consideration the speculative meanings of the
31
“character of the governmental action” element of the
Penn Central test that have been proposed by the lower
courts.80
This simplifies and rationalizes Penn
Central in a desirable way.
Second, I have argued
that, despite Justice O’Connor’s rhetorical efforts,
Lingle did not eliminate, and could not possibly have
eliminated, the relevance of the government’s aims,
objectives, and purposes in assessing whether a Fifth
Amendment taking has occurred.
The reason is that
those aims, objectives, and purposes are intimately
bound up in the “background principles” concept of
Lucas, and by their nature cannot be separated.
Indeed, the remaining meaning of “character of
the governmental action” is nothing more or less than
the incorporation into Penn Central of the Lucas
“background principles” concept.81
To that extent but
no further, “character of the governmental action” is
a test that remains alive and well.
The practical
difficulty, of course, is that the scope of the
“background principles” is often unclear or debatable.
Thus we are left to conclude that some regulations of
32
land conform to “background principles” and others do
not, and that the distinction between the two types of
regulations is likely to remain indistinct and
debatable long into the future.
33
*
James E. Campbell Professor of Law, University
of Missouri-Columbia.
The author expresses his
gratitude to Professor Steven J. Eagle of George Mason
University School of Law for his helpful comments on a
draft of this article.
Any errors, however, are
attributable to the author alone.
1
544 U.S. 528 (2005).
The decision was announced
on May 23, 2005.
2
O’Connor announced her retirement on July 1,
2005.
Perhaps her more famous “parting shot” in the
land use regulation field was her dissent in Kelo v.
City of New London, decided one month later, on June
23, 2005, holding that a city’s use of the eminent
domain power for economic development objectives was
legitimate under the Fifth Amendment’s “public use”
clause.
545 U.S. 469, 494 (2005)(O’Connor, J.,
dissenting).
While her opinion in Kelo was more
controversial and garnered far more public attention,
1
it did not — unlike Lingle — represent the views of
the court at large.
O’Connor had previously written the majority or
plurality opinion in four other takings cases:
Haw.
Hous. Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984) (finding
no taking in Hawaii’s scheme allowing residents living
on ground-leased land to buy out the reversions);
Hodel v. Irving, 481 U.S. 704, 718 (1987) (finding a
taking in a statute that prevented small fractional
interests in allotted Indian lands from passing to the
owner’s heirs or devisees); Yee v. City of Escondido,
503 U.S. 519 (1992) (finding no taking in a rent
control ordinance applicable to mobile home parks); E.
Enters. v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498 (1998) (finding a
taking in a federal statute that retroactively imposed
an obligation on mining companies to pay lifetime
health benefits of miners who had worked for them).
For a complete review of O’Connor’s takings opinions,
see Robert Meltz, Property Rights “Takings”: Justice
O’Connor’s Opinions, Congressional Research Service
2
(2005), available at
www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/05aug/RS22227.pdf
3
447 U.S. 255 (1980).
4
See, e.g., Jonathan H. Adler, Property Rights
and Wrongs, National Review Online, June 29, 2005,
http://www.nationalreview.com/adler/adler200506290806.
asp.
5
505 U.S. 1003 (1992).
6
Economists for Chevron testified that the rent
cap would allow existing lessee-dealers, when
transferring occupancy rights to new lessees, to
charge incoming lessee a premium reflecting the value
of the rent reduction.
Lingle, 544 U.S. at 535-36.
Hence, they argued that in the long run, neither
lessee-dealers as a group nor their customers would be
benefited by the cap.
experts disagreed.
7
Id. Of course, the State’s
Id.
See Robert G. Dreher, Lingle’s Legacy:
Untangling Substantive Due Process From Takings
Doctrine, 30 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 371 (2006).
3
8
Lingle, 544 U.S. at 536, 548.
9
Id. at 538; see Loretto v. Teleprompter
Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419 (1982)(holding that
a state law requiring landlords to permit cable
companies to install cable facilities in apartment
buildings effected a taking).
10
Lingle, 544 U.S. at 538 (emphasis in original);
see Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1019
11
Lucas, 505 U.S. at 102632.
12
Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438
U.S. 104, 124 (1978).
13
Id.
14
Id.
15
Lingle, 544 U.S. at 538-39.
16
Nollan v. Cal. Coastal Comm’n, 483 U.S. 825
(1987).
17
Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994).
In substance, Nollan and Dolan hold that an exaction
is a taking unless the land or money demanded by the
government will be used to solve a problem or meet a
4
public burden that will be created by the landowner’s
development, and even then, only if the magnitude of
the exaction is roughly proportional to the cost or
burden that will be imposed on the public by the
development.
18
See infra notes 46-60.
19
See Bradley C. Davis, Substantially Advancing
Penn Central: Sharpening the Remaining Arrow in the
Property Advocate’s Quiver for the New Age of
Regulatory Takings, 30 Nova L. Rev. 445 (2006).
20
See, e.g., Fla. Rock Indus., Inc. v. United
States, 45 Fed. Cl. 21, 24 (1999) (finding a
compensable taking, where about three-fourths of the
land’s value was destroyed by the regulation); Walcek
v. United States, 49 Fed. Cl. 248 (2001), aff’d,
Walcek v. United States, 303 F.3d 1349, 1354 (Fed.
Cir. 2002) (finding no compensable taking where about
sixty percent of the land’s value was destroyed by the
regulation).
21
533 U.S. 606 (2001).
5
22
See J. David Breemer & R. S. Radford, The
(Less?) Murky Doctrine of Investment-Backed
Expectations After Palazzolo, and the Lower Courts’
Disturbing Insistence on Wallowing in the
Pre-Palazzolo Muck, 34 Sw. U. L. Rev. 351, 355 (2005)
(observing that landowners who are put on constructive
notice have no legitimate expectations to put their
property to productive use); Daniel Mandelker,
Investment-Backed Expectations in Takings Law, 27 Urb.
Law. 215, 224-25 (1995) (noting Justice Scalia’s
recognition “that this limitation on the per se taking
rule is consistent with taking jurisprudence”).
23
See infra notes 27-39.
24
See, e.g., Richard A. Epstein, Not Deference,
But Doctrine: The Eminent Domain Clause, 1982 Sup. Ct.
Rev. 351, 355 (“The looseness of the relevant factors
invites, if not requires, the Court to engage in a
general balancing test that in turn places no limit on
the factors to be considered or the outcome to be
reached.”).
6
25
Penn Central, 438 U.S. at 124.
26
See, e.g., Allegretti & Co. v. County of
Imperial, 42 Cal. Rptr. 3d 122, 134 (Cal. Ct. App.
2006) (understanding this to be the meaning of the
“character” test).
27
480 U.S. 470 (1987).
28
Id. at 485.
29
482 U.S. 304 (1987).
30
Id. at 325-26 (quoting Mugler v. Kansas, 123
U.S. 623, 668-69 (1887)).
31
324 F.3d 1297, 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (holding
that the denial of a permit to fill wetland by U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers might constitute a regulatory
taking and remanding for further findings of fact
under Lucas and Penn Central).
32
Id. (internal citation omitted).
33
Of course, unfair treatment of a landowner may
also be a due process or an equal protection
violation.
See City of Monterey v. Del Monte Dunes at
Monterey, Ltd. 526 U.S. 687 (1999) (mistreatment of
7
landowner resulted in a violation of 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983); Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S.
562, 563 (2000) (government’s singling out landowner
for mistreatment violated Equal Protection Clause).
34
49 Fed. Cl. 36 (2001).
35
Id. at 50 (internal citation omitted).
36
136 F.3d 1219, 1228 (9th Cir. 1998) (holding no
compensable taking occurred when county refused to
permit owners to construct a residence of land zoned
for forest use).
37
900 F.2d 783, 787 (4th Cir. 1990).
The
prohibition on all off-premises outdoor advertising
signs within city did not necessarily constitute a
compensable taking.
38
Id. at 784.
See Fla. Rock Indus., 45 Fed. Cl. 21, 76 (1999)
(holding that a regulation prohibiting filling and
construction on wetlands constituted a partial
regulatory taking).
39
Id. at 66.
40
544 U.S. at 539.
8
41
Id. at 543.
42
Id. at 540.
43
See Steven J. Eagle & William H. Mellor III,
Regulatory Takings After the Supreme Court’s 1991-92
Term: An Evolving Return to Property Rights, 29 Cal.
W. L. Rev. 209, 235 (1993) (predicting the same sort
of development, but by way of relaxation of the “no
remaining economic value” standard of Lucas rather
than a tightening of the “economic impact” standard of
Penn Central”).
44
544 U.S. at 542.
45
505 U.S. at 1030.
46
See, e.g., Keshbro, Inc. v. City of Miami, 801
So. 2d 864 (Fla. 2001) (closing of motel that was
being operated as a drug house and brothel was
justified on the ground that it was a public
nuisance).
Cf. State ex rel. R.T.G., Inc. v. State,
753 N.E.2d 869 (Ohio Ct. App. 2001) (prohibiting coal
mining was a compensable taking, where mining activity
was not a nuisance).
9
47
See, e.g., Mutschler v. City of Phoenix, 129
P.3d 71, 75-76 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2006) (quoting with
approval Michael C. Blumm & Lucus Ritchie, Lucas’s
Unlikely Legacy: The Rise of Background Principles as
Categorical Takings Defenses, 29 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev.
321 (2005)).
The court in Mutschler stated:
Lucas’s threshold inquiry applies not only
to Lucas-style complete economic wipeout
takings, but also to physical occupation
cases and, more importantly, to Penn
Central-type regulatory cases where less
than total economic deprivation has
occurred.
Id.;
see also Esplanade Props., LLC v. City of
Seattle, 307 F.3d 978 (9th Cir. 2002) (implicitly
finding that satisfaction of the “background
principles” doctrine would bar the finding of a taking
under both Lucas and Penn Central).
48
Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1029-30.
49
See Lyons v. Twp. of Wayne, 888 A.2d 426, 433
(N.J. 2005) (“Individually, an instance of flooding is
a trespass, but it is also a nuisance if it is
10
repeated or of long duration.” (internal citation
omitted)).
50
462 P.2d 671 (Or. 1969) (finding that “custom”
comprehended a right of the public to make use of the
dry sand portion of all beaches in the state); Stevens
v. City of Cannon Beach, 835 P.2d 940 (Or. 1992)
(determining that the right of “custom” recognized in
Thornton is a Lucas “background principle”).
51
See Public Access Shoreline Hawaii v. County of
Hawaii, 903 P.2d 1246 (Haw. 1995).
52
See supra note 47.
53
See. e.g., West Maricopa Combine, Inc. v. Ariz.
Dept. of Water Res., 26 P.3d 1171 (Ariz. Ct. App.
2001).
54
See Palm Beach Isles Assocs. v. United States,
208 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2000) (holding that the
federal navigation servitude is a “background
principle” under Lucas).
Justice Scalia’s opinion in
Lucas concedes that the government’s navigation
servitude may be a “background principle” when he
11
cites Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U.S. 141 (1900), which
recognizes such a servitude.
55
Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1029
See Just v. Marinette County, 201 N.W.2d 761,
768 (Wis. 1972) (limiting undeveloped or agrarian land
to its “natural” uses); Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1059
(Blackmun, J., dissenting) (same).
Contra McQueen v.
S. C. Coastal Council, 530 S.E.2d 628 (S.C. Ct. App.
2000) (holding that the “natural use” doctrine is not
a “background principle” of state law); K & K Const.,
Inc. v. Dep’t of Natural Res., 551 N.W.2d 413, 417
(Mich. Ct. App. 1996), rev’d on other grounds, 575
N.W.2d 531 (1998) (“[A] request to fill in wetlands
does not constitute a nuisance that the government may
abate”).
See also Good v. United States, 39 Fed. Cl.
81, 98 n.30 (1997), aff’d, 189 F.3d 1355 (1999)
(noting that the status of “natural use” as a
background principle of state law is unclear).
56
Kim v. City of N.Y., 681 N.E.2d 312 (N.Y.
1997).
12
57
The public trust doctrine provides that the
state holds public trust lands, waters, and resources
for the benefit of its citizens, with an inherent
right of the public to enjoy them even if they are
privately owned.
See Palazzolo v. State, No. WM 88-
0297, 2005 WL 1645974, at *6-8 (R.I. Super. Ct., July
5, 2005) (prohibition of owner’s development of
coastal land was warranted by public trust doctrine as
well as nuisance law); McQueen v. S. C. Coastal
Council, 580 S.E.2d 116 (S.C. 2003) (prohibition of
development was justified by public trust doctrine);
Esplanade Props., LLC v. City of Seattle, 307 F.3d 978
(9th Cir. 2002) (finding that the public trust
doctrine was a “background principle” that would
preclude finding a taking when the City of Seattle,
acting under the Washington’s Shoreline Management Act
(“SMA”), Wash. Rev. Code § 90.58.010, prohibited the
owner from developing the shoreline with housing).
The Esplanada holding was foreshadowed in Hope M.
Babcock, Has the U.S. Supreme Court Finally Drained
13
the Swamp of Takings Jurisprudence?: The Impact of
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council on Wetlands
and Coastal Barrier Beaches, 19 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 1
(1995).
58
A branch of the public trust doctrine that
holds that government ownership of wildlife should be
exercised as a trust for the benefit of the public.
See Sierra Club v. Dep’t of Forestry & Fire Prot., 26
Cal. Rptr. 2d 338, 347 (Cal. Ct. App. 1993) (finding
that “wildlife regulation of some sort has been
historically a part of the preexisting law of
property” and is thus a Lucas background principle);
Geer v. Conn., 161 U.S. 519, 529 (1896) (“[T]he power
or control lodged in the state, resulting from this
common ownership, is to be exercised, like all other
powers of government, as a trust for the benefit of
the people”); Mary Christina Wood, Protecting the
Wildlife Trust: A Reinterpretation of Section 7 of the
Endangered Species Act, 34 Envtl. L. 605, 608-09
(2004) (discussing the wildlife trust doctrine).
14
59
The court’s action can, of course, be
criticized as a retroactive “recognition” of a public
right that had never before been noticed by the
judiciary.
See, e.g., David L. Callies & J. David
Breemer, Selected Legal and Policy Trends in Takings
Law: Background Principles, Custom and Public Trust
“Exceptions” and the (Mis)Use of Investment-backed
Expectations, 36 Val. U. L. Rev. 339 (2002).
But that
is not my point here.
60
Note that the regulatory remedy did not
precisely fit the risk, for the county ordinance
prohibited only construction of buildings and
structures, and not low-intensity uses such as tent
camping (which might indeed have been quite
dangerous).
Nonetheless, prohibiting structures could
quite rationally be expected to reduce or minimize, if
not to completely eliminate, human use of the land.
61
The California Court of Appeal, on remand in
First English, held that no taking had occurred, both
because the land had some residual value despite the
15
inability of the church to build on it, and because of
the serious threat to safety that would be raised by
building on the land.
First English Evangelical
Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, 258 Cal.
Rptr. 893, 905-07 (Cal. Ct. App. 1989).
The decision
must be understood in the light of a long record of
hostility to regulatory takings claims in the
California courts.
For example, in 1979 the
California Supreme Court held in Agins v. City of
Tiburon, 157 Cal.Rptr. 372 (Cal. Ct. App. 1979), that
there was no such thing as a regulatory taking, and
that the landowner’s only remedy for an unduly
burdensome regulation was to have the court treat it
as a due process violation and suspend its operation.
62
See Carpenter v. Double R Cattle Co., 669 P.2d
643 (Idaho Ct. App. 1983); David S. Wilgus, The Nature
of Nuisance: Judicial Environmental Ethics and
Landowner Stewardship in the Age of Ecology, 33
McGeorge L. Rev. 99, 125 (2001).
63
123 U.S. 623 (1887).
16
64
Id. at 664-65, 668-69.
65
See First English, 258 Cal. Rptr. at 898.
66
Id. at 899.
67
See supra note 30.
68
The South Carolina legislature had found that a
stable, uneroded beach benefited the public by acting
as a barrier to storms, promoting tourism, providing a
habitat for various plants and animals, and providing
a desirable environment for human use.
Construction
on the beach was found to threaten and impair these
benefits.
Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1022.
69
Id. at 1029 n.16.
70
Id.
See Inhabitants of Frankfort v. Waldo
County Comm’rs, 40 Me. 389 (1855), in which the
government paid compensation to the building owner on
similar facts.
71
The Eastern District of Michigan made precisely
this point in discussing Bowditch in Flatford v. City
of Monroe, 794 F. Supp. 227, 233 (E.D. Mich. 1992).
72
See cases cited supra notes 50-58.
17
73
But see Hoeck v. City of Portland, 57 F.3d 781,
787 (9th Cir. 1995), disagreeing with this view.
Portland had demolished a partially renovated but
abandoned, boarded-up building — a clear case of
nuisance — but the court commented that “this does not
amount to a physical occupation even where the
government’s activity has a permanent effect.”
Id. at
787.
74
101 U.S. 16 (1879).
75
Id. at 18.
76
See, e.g., United States v. Caltex, 344 U.S.
149 (1953) (no compensation was granted to owners of
oil terminal facilities in the Philippines that were
demolished by the United States Army to prevent their
falling into Japanese hands at the commencement of
World War II); Strickland v. Dep’t of Agric. &
Consumer Servs., 922 So. 2d 1022 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App.
2006) (no compensation available to landowner whose
property was damaged by firefighters); McCoy v.
Sanders, 148 S.E.2d 902 (Ga. Ct. App. 1966) (no
18
compensation was available to landowner whose pond was
drained by police seeking body of murder victim).
See
also Inhabitants of Frankfort v. Waldo County Comm’rs,
40 Me. 389 (1855), in which the government paid
compensation to the building owner on similar facts.
77
505 U.S. at 1029.
78
See, for example, Steele v. City of Houston,
603 S.W.2d 786 (Tex. 1980), in which the police burned
down a house in which escaped convicts were hiding in
order to capture them.
The court ordered
compensation, based primarily on the Texas
Constitution, which provides that property may not be
“taken, damaged, or destroyed for or applied to public
use, without adequate compensation.”
1876, art. I, § 17.
Tex. Const. of
The court recognized the doctrine
of necessity, but concluded that it should not apply.
The court quoted Prosser on Torts to emphasize that
the degree of necessity is the critical fact:
Thus one who dynamites a house to stop the
spread of a conflagration that threatens a
town, or shoots a mad dog in the street, or
19
burns clothing infected with smallpox germs,
or, in time of war, destroys property which
should not be allowed to fall into the hands
of the enemy, is not liable to the owner, so
long as the emergency is great enough, and
he has acted reasonably under the
circumstances.
Steele, 603 S.W.2d at 792 (citing Prosser, The Law of
Torts § 24 (4th ed. 1971)) (emphasis added).
79
The California Court of Appeal to the contrary
notwithstanding.
See supra note 65 and accompanying
text.
80
See supra notes 27-39 and accompanying text.
81
Judge Allegra of the U.S. Court of Claims
recognized this fact in his opinion in Walcek v.
United States, 49 Fed. Cl. 248 (2001), aff’d, Walcek
v. United States, 303 F.3d 1349 (D.C. Cir. 2002), when
he wrote, as part of his analysis of the “character of
the governmental action” prong of the Penn Central
test:
There is no significant evidence in this
case that the plaintiffs’ proposed use of
the Property would formally constitute a
nuisance under Delaware state law, so that
the application of the Federal wetland
20
regulations could be viewed as enforcing a
limitation already inherent in the Property.
At the same time, the existence of the
wetland regulations in question, as well as
their application to the Property,
indisputably serve an important public
purpose — one which benefits plaintiffs as
members of the public at large.
49 Fed. Cl. at 270 (emphasis added and citations
omitted).
21